The Blessing of Giving

The Shepherd's Church

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Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day sermon We pray that as we declare the

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Word of God that you would be encouraged Strengthened in your faith and that you would catch a greater vision of who

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Christ is May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you our giving testifies to our values our giving our money says a lot about what we prioritize what we love and what even we worship for it is

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Jesus himself who said where your treasure is there your heart will be also and Because prayerfully

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We want to have the heart of God Because we want to have affections that are centered on Jesus Christ because we want to worship in a way that is pleasing

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To the Spirit we want our treasure To be aligned with him.

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We want him to be our great treasure So we have to talk about money

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Now to my knowledge, this is the first sermon that we've talked about money directly at the

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Shepherds Church We've been three years as a church and we have not spoken about this concept.

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Isn't that fascinating? But how we handle our finances how we handle money says a lot about what we think about God and about worship

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Our money will either serve God or we will serve our money Our money will either serve

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God or we will serve our money for it was Jesus who said no one can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other you cannot serve both

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God and money So we need sermons that talk about this

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We need sermons that from a Christian and from a biblical perspective talk about how do we handle something so basic to our lives?

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We interact with money and assets and finance every day of our life in some way or another and because of the

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The way that payment systems have become so easy. We deal with it multiple times a day

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We don't have to carry around loads of coins now. You can send payments digitally instantly We need a theology of how to deal with something like money

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Now we have to follow the word That's what this church is all about. It's what all churches are supposed to be about We need to follow what the

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Word of God says, even if it makes us uncomfortable Especially if it makes us uncomfortable and requires radical changes in our life

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So now for the next two weeks, we're gonna cover this topic The reason it's two weeks is because it would have been an 80 -minute sermon if it was one week

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So about Friday, I decided this has to be two Today, all we're going to do is we're gonna provide a foundation for the topic.

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We're gonna go back into the Old Testament We're gonna look at the Old Testament tithe We're gonna look at the Old Testament system of giving and our goal today is just to see what can we learn as a

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Foundation that we can build upon next week so with that Will you pray with me?

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Will you join me? So we're gonna be a little bit all over the place today. We're not gonna read from a specific scripture

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Let us go to the word and let us go to the Lord Father, thank you so much As we see all throughout the scriptures that we give because you first gave

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That we Hold everything that we have in open hands that truly nothing belongs to us

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Because the very air that we breathe the material reality around us was all created out of nothing by you and it's all yours

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Lord let us today Let us today not see a message or a or scriptures where we walk away thinking that if I can do this

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If I can just give more then God will love me more Lord let us not walk away from here today that if we say things like if I give more than I'll get more which is what so many in the prosperity gospel say

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Lord I pray just a very simple prayer That you would be our chief affection that you would be our treasure that we wouldn't cling to trinkets and and Finances and assets and that those things wouldn't grab hold of us, but we would hold our hands open and we would say

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God I'll give whatever you want me to give I'll receive whatever you want me to receive.

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I'm just I just want to have you I Want you more than anything else Lord. Will you help that to be our heart?

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It's in Christ's name we pray amen Now you may be asking why are we doing a sermon on this now seems abrupt maybe you're thinking well

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We're having a membership meeting today and we're talking about a finalized budget. Well, that's why he's talking about it Maybe it's the beginning of the year and last year's budget wasn't quite what we were thinking and now that's why he's not

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We wanted to talk about this last year in the true church series But it just we didn't have enough

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Weeks to be able to do it because we would have been then running into Christmas and we wanted to do the songs of Christmas Series so badly that we decided to put this off until this time.

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So Now we're doing it here Before we get back to John and we will be back in John soon and I am looking forward to being back in John because I love that book so much

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But we could not do a church on true or we cannot do a series on the true church without talking about money

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The Bible just talks too much about it The Bible is not afraid of talking about money

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Jesus himself talks about it a lot Paul talks about it all over the place money is important concept for the church because Whether we like it or not.

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We live in a world where things cost and the kingdom of God is

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Contributed to and built upon the generosity of the Saints and the building of Christ So we have to look at it and To do that.

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We're gonna go back first into the Old Testament. We're gonna look at tithe What is a tithe? We think well, it's 10 %

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Yeah, but it's so much more than that though 10 % it's not adequate to describe what we see in the

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Old Testament It's actually 10 % of a lot of different things that are all culminating together into like 25 -30 % of their giving was to God and it was for the building up of his church

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So we have to go to the Bible discover that we have to go to the Old Testament to discover that and what I found

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So interesting when I was reading this I read every passage in the Old Testament on giving and all of them are connected to worship

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Every single one of them when it talks about giving it talks about worship. It does not talk about giving in some rote formulaic

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Duty bound obedience it talks about it in the sense of joyful loving God worshiping him with all of our heart soul mind strength wallet fields lands, etc

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For instance when the tabernacle is installed It talks about giving the worship of God happens at the tabernacle and then immediately is talking about giving

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When the temple was built It talks about giving when the temple was burned down destroyed 70 years left vacant And then the people of God come back and they rebuild the temple under Ezra They rebuild the city of Jerusalem under under Nehemiah.

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It talks about giving and dedication And the reason I think is because giving and worship are connected when we say that we love

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God and Yet we hold so tightly to our stuff.

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It says something about the way that we worship If we truly worship God, we will realize that nothing in this life belongs to us not even our blood cells

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Every facet of our being belongs to God and the

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Bible is going to tell us exactly What to believe about giving and what to do about Giving and again,

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I want to make it very clear before we even get to these passages Everything we have belongs to God The paper that we print our money on belongs to God The boards we build our houses with belong to God The automobiles that we drive praise

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God for Henry Ford and for the Industrial Revolution Are owned by God the energy and the

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ATP a denison triphosphate that wakes you up in the morning and Takes you to work and brings you home and is why you receive a paycheck belongs to God The chemical processes in your body belong to God, isn't that a fascinating thing?

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Without his material world we could do say think believe nothing

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So we own nothing The body that we work so hard to craft and to sculpt

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The body that we use to labor none of it. Thank you All of that belongs to God and I would say even more than that it's a hundred percent

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God But it's also a hundred percent grace That we're allowed to keep anything that we have

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If you think about it, it's a tremendous grace that God gave us anything. He made these creatures from the dirt

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He put them in a garden that they didn't deserve He gave them gift upon gift upon gift the greatest gift of all was his presence in their life and they turn their back on him and Instead of destroying them instead of wiping away creation.

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He allowed the Sun to shine on their fallen backs Eventually, he would allow the rain to water their fallow fields

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God has been exceedingly generous to us who are fallen creatures in that he gives us anything.

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It's his world It's his resources So when

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God in the Bible says I'm gonna give you All these blessings and I'm only gonna ask that you give a small portion back to me.

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He's being exceedingly gracious. I Thought about an example of this let's say you walk out of here today and you are going about your business you're on your way home, maybe and Somebody comes up to you and says

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I have a gift. I would like to give you They say I'm gonna give you a million dollars

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Some of your eyes just got really wide And he says I only have one catch I'm gonna give you a million dollars

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But I want you to give me a hundred thousand back in return We'd be like, yeah Sign me up for that.

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Where's that guy been all my life? And yeah, why don't we treat God that way

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He gives us everything and yet we hold so tightly to small numbers

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I Can never give 10 % of my income to the Lord. Well, that was the

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Old Testament beginning of giving That wasn't even the end of it And if you really think about it really think about it if everything belongs to God 10 % seems like a really small number does it not?

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All of it is his and yet he's asked for so little and what we will see is

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That in that giving God actually outgives us That when we give to him, he actually gives us more in return.

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He asked for crumbs from us And yet we often we run up our credit cards we max out our standard of living by having a mortgage payment that just Puts us at the edge of reasonability

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We eat higher and higher budgets. We have entertainment allowances. Can you think about the

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Christians who lived in the first century? Hey, brother Simon, how much is your entertainment balance or your entertainment budget?

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I Don't know. I'm gonna be fed to a lion next week Someone else's entertainment budget

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We Get swimming pools and vacation homes and none of those things are bad if those things don't own us, but oftentimes

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The things we own end up owning us The things we have end up having us We become consumed and preoccupied with the things of the world.

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Why? Do we do that because at the root of the matter We forget all of us.

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We forget that everything is God's When we walk out of here today, we will intellectually mentally and even physically with our bodies

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We will acknowledge that everything belongs to the Lord. We will live like everything belongs to us We will live like everything we have was earned by our ingenuity in our incredible experience

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We don't live like the million -dollar man The devil really has twisted our thinking on this topic

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Now when we get to the Old Testament We're gonna see a

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God who gives lavishly. This is the way God models for us how he wants us to behave He does for us what he expects us to do back to him

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He never commands us to do something that he's not doing for us. So he gives us lavishly and Then calls us to give sparingly

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We see that God in these passages that we're gonna look at expects us to be sacrificial in our giving

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I have a standard in my home. I don't put a number on it But I say if I'm not giving until it hurts then it's not sacrificial

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If I'm not giving until I have to look at my budget and say what can

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I cut this year? then I'm not giving in a way that I See here in the

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Bible and I see in the Scriptures The tithe again was a 10 % commandment on all kinds of things

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We're gonna begin in Leviticus 27 30 through 32, which we read earlier This is a tithe of the seeds and the fruits and the flocks.

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This is what it says Thus all the tithe of the land of the seeds of the land or the fruit of the land is the

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Lord's It is holy to the Lord It is therefore if therefore man wishes to redeem part of his tithe.

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He shall add one -fifth to it For every tenth part of the herd of the flock whatever passes under the rod the tenth one shall be holy unto the

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Lord Now what I love about this passage is we have to remember the context Leviticus.

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They've just come out of slavery They just come out of 400 years of being bound in chains and whipped on their backs in Egypt They're being promised a land that they didn't work for God says you're gonna enter this land.

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I'm gonna give it to you. You didn't even work for it You're gonna live in houses that you didn't build You're going to reap the the vineyard crop that you didn't plant

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This year that God was promising them this when you go into the land you will have everything

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So give back to me a tenth Give back to me a tenth what a small request for people who were just slaves people were just broke

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Penniless they were the ones who were sitting on the street with a 10 cup saying I need some pennies and now

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God has given Them a bounty of blessings and he says give me back 10 % Give me 10 % of your land and I'll give you total freedom

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Give me 10 % of your seeds And give them to the temple 10 % of your fruits and 10 % of your flocks and What we see in that this is

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I think the most astounding thing is When they give their seeds their flocks their animals

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God gives them back more than they gave to him in the first place When they give 10 % of their wealth to God he gives back priceless gifts in return

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If you think about the million dollar example that I shared a minute ago a silly example, it would be like this

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Kendall can I give you a million dollars? I'm interested You only have to give me a hundred thousand in return sign me up and For that hundred thousand dollars.

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I'm gonna give you something. That's absolutely priceless That has value beyond anything you could imagine.

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So do you see what's happened here? I've went from being broke to $900 ,000 positive and now with something else added on top of that.

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That's absolutely priceless What this is teaching us is that we actually cannot out give

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God Because when they gave him 10 % of their land He gave them freedom that they never had when they gave them the seeds of their land

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He gave them abundant crops and abundant fruits when he gave when they gave them the flocks He gave them fruitful and multiplying flocks and it's just not just material blessings

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He said if you do these things and you come to my temple I will be your God and I will live and dwell among you the greatest blessing that they ever received was his presence

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So that we give to God he always gives more When we open up our hands and say

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Lord, what do you want me to give? He always meets us with greater blessings This is a fun when 10 % of their fragrant oils

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They had to give It says in Deuteronomy 14 22 through 23. You shall surely tithe all

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Of the produce from what you sow which comes out of the field every year so that you shall eat in In the presence of the

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Lord you see the blessing Give be in God's presence at the place where he chooses to establish his name the tithe of your grain your new wine your oil

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The firstborn of your herd and of your flock so that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always Now there's some overlap.

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There's some things that we've already talked about like herds and flocks and things like that But it also says to tithe your oil

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All my homeschool moms here You're young living Frankincense oil on your on your counter if you were in the

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Old Testament You'd give a tenth of that to the Lord your tea tree oil that you mix when you have heartburn

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With a little bit of water. Sorry. My wife has oils. I know something of the matter You would tithe those oils to the

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Lord Everything because this is what it's teaching us Everything belongs to God everything that touches your hands belongs to him and we give back to him joyfully

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God explains his radical generosity for why he does this in the passage and it's not for him He doesn't ask us to give because he's in need

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He doesn't ask us to give because he wants something from us He asked us to give because he wants to give something to us.

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This is what he says. I Am NOT asking this for me. Although sorry, that was my quote the text

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Says so that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always God was asking him to give their flocks their oils their wines their

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Stuff to him so that they would learn to fear him. Why? Because worship and giving are connected when you give something from your bounty as A fallen creature it strikes at you.

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It gnaws at you a little bit because we're all broken When the people of Israel were told you can gather manna six days a week, but on the seventh day you cannot gather

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Do you see what happened to them? They went crazy They sat in their living room and they're like, how are we gonna eat today?

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And they went out and they gathered on the wrong day just as God had told them Why did God tell them that was in an arbitrary rule?

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No, he gave them that so they would trust him So they would learn to fear him so they would learn to see that he is their provider

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By us giving to God and by giving to his ministry. We're not adding to God's happiness.

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God is infinitely happy We're not giving to God's wallet. God has everything you can't give him something.

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That's not his There's no Adam in the universe that you could give to God and he'd say thank you so much.

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I needed that We give to God because we need to give to God we need to learn how to trust him

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It's it's a way of God taking out the scalpel and severing your heart from your stuff

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Giving causes us to be more joyful giving causes us to trust

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God more Because there's times where a budget just doesn't make sense to us

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We look at it and we say all right, I've already cut out Netflix and Hulu and everything else I don't have space for it

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It doesn't make sense We have faith in and give to God again. Not because God's in need.

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That's not what this message is about. I Remember when I was convicted of this. I was a brand -new

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Christian and I was convicted that I needed to give to the Lord and The number on my mind at that time was 10 % it's a good number in the

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Bible so I just I did that and I wept because I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna pay my mortgage I Never ran out

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Now the prosperity gospel will tell you if you give then you'll be riding around in a Maserati soon. It wasn't like that either

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When God says he'll meet our needs he doesn't say he'll meet he'll meet our wants My money went further than it ever went before because I gave it to God My anxiety went down Imagine that My anxiety went down because I gave it to God There's something intrinsic about us giving in our worship that's connected together that if we will trust

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God God will come through The tithe teaches us that God lavishly provides on his people who give sparingly

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And he covers them and he cares for them it's all throughout the Bible and Many people will twist these verses like the prosperity gospel people will twist these verses and they will make it be like if you give

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Then you'll be blessed materially. That's not what I'm saying But there is a connection that if you give

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God will take care of you and he will meet your needs It says in 2nd

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Chronicles 31 5 through 10. This is in Hezekiah's time It says as soon

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This is another type of tithe, by the way As soon as the order spread the sons of Israel provided an abundance the first fruits of their grain new wine oil

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Honey, and of all the produce of the field and they brought it abundantly the tithe of all the sons of Israel and Judah Who lived in the cities of Judah also brought in the tithe of the oxen and the sheep and the tithe of the sacred gifts?

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Which were consecrated to the Lord and they placed them in heaps I love that passage They went to the church and whatever coffers they had to put their giving in was too small.

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So they heaped it We don't even know what that means as far as sigh. I mean they heaped it. I love that in the third month they began to make the heaps and Finish them by the seventh month four months of additional heaps.

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That's crazy When Hezekiah and the ruler came and saw the heaps I'm not that's what they call it.

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They're like, I don't know what to call this big mound When Hezekiah and the rulers came and saw the heaps they blessed

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God Or they blessed the Lord and his people Israel then Hezekiah questioned the priest and the Levites concerning the heaps

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Azariah the chief priest of the house of Zadok said to him Since the contributions began to be brought into the house of the

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Lord. We've had enough to eat with plenty left over For the Lord has blessed his people and this great quantity has been left over What a beautiful image of a congregation a nation of people who are not addicted to their stuff

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Who are so providing for the Lord that it's heaped You see the same thing in the book of Exodus where they're told to bring their gold and their silver and their jewels

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Do you remember when they left Egypt? God had rained down ten plagues on top of the Egyptians head and the

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Egyptians went to the Israelites and they're like take our stuff Go we want you out They gave them their gold.

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They give them their jewels. They give them their rings. They give them their necklaces and the Israelites are like All right How quickly though wouldn't it be a temptation to say this free gift that we got is ours

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We're gonna cling to it, but they didn't do it God said that I want you to take that and give it to the

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Consecration of the tabernacle and it got so generous That it says and we've talked about this verse before that God said stop we have enough

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How often have we been in prayer with God we've been in the scripture and we

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Clearly understood that our giving was so lavish That it was irresponsible and wanton and it would be a good idea to stop.

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I Don't think I've ever given that way. I want to give that way It says even though they were giving everything.

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Nobody went hungry God provides We cannot out give God Because God always gives more than we do

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When you give extravagantly God provides for you lavishly and it's not always material blessings

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Again, this is not name it and claim it theology We just simply trust that God will provide our needs and again our needs are not mansions and Maserati's Those are often the things that we need to get rid of because they've got a hold of us

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You'd be surprised at how quickly things can get a hold of you. I Can buy a watch that's like $15

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And I can that's a really good -looking watch and all of a sudden I have pride. I'm like, it looks like it's 150 our phones our televisions our stuff our cars we can become so consumed with these things that they put their hooks in us and Then they own us and they have us and then before you know it we're living for the next thing

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Instead of God giving severs the hook from the flesh and causes you to trust

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God Jesus tells us about this in Matthew 6 33

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He says but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things.

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Everything else will be added to you Our life is not about us seeking our castles to build our castles our life is about the kingdom of Almighty God When you get to the end of your life, it's not gonna matter if you got 15 promotions

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If you get to the end of your life It's not gonna matter how much money you've got in your bank account that you can give to your ancestors or your progeny

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When you get to the end of your life It's not gonna matter what your what your 401k looks like when you get to the end of your life It's not gonna matter how much stuff you had that's gonna end up in garage sales and junkyards for moth and rust to eat

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When you get to the end of your life and you hear well done my good and faithful servant, did you build the kingdom?

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Did you invest in the kingdom? Because if you do the promise is here that he will meet your needs

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Again, you might not live a life of luxury But what will that buy you? Jesus says moth and rust eat that That's not the hope the hope

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Is that we've invested in God's kingdom? Being rich in God rich in his mercy seeing people come to life seeing the kingdom expand.

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That's her. That's why we're here That's why Jesus didn't zap us out of here.

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That's why he leaves us here is to build his kingdom Again that's why this church was even founded

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I've got a chance and I'm not I know this is not scripture what I'm sharing with you right now It's anecdotal.

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So just forgive me, but it's it's my experience I know my testimony is not the Bible, right?

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But when we planted this church the thing that bothered me the most about it, I'm gonna be completely honest with you is money

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I Was at a nice Evangelical job as a discipleship pastor.

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I was making enough money to cover my bills and save a little extra and Then Lord put this church on my heart and on Derek's heart and the first thing that I thought was fear

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Over how am I gonna be able to provide for my family? I Carried that fear for nine straight months till it was a burden that was choking me

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It felt like a noose around my neck because I wasn't yet ready to trust God that if I stepped out he would provide he

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Would rescue he would help he would cover I Couldn't see it practically When the finally like Jeremiah says that it was like a fire inside me that had to get out

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When I finally realized that God wasn't gonna let me alone And I stepped out

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I quit my job I had one month of severance to figure something out and We were on Early, my family was on the

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John Bon Jovi budget. We were living on a prayer But what

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I found is Is that every single time we had a need God met it It is ridiculous and this is not what the sermons about It's ridiculous the stories that I have of God meeting my needs my family's needs and I'm not unique You look at men like George Muller read his biography that man

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Lived on prayer and God provided for his needs You look at every saint who who went out into fear and uncertainty and into the void and God provided I I remember early

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Pastor Derek was giving all of his energy and effort to raising a brand new family brand new kids

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Working a full -time job Sometimes 40 50 plus hours a week and also given full -time hours to the church and God multiplied his efforts

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God multiplied his time What I'm saying is if we will trust God with us God will provide

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I've seen it too many times I've seen it now.

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I share that to encourage you and I shun. I'll share that To say that we did everything right? We certainly did not but I share that to encourage you you cannot out give

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God You can't give yourself into a place where God can't provide for you. You just can't

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That's why the scripture always tells us To give sacrificially to give joyfully because when you give joyfully you're expecting

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God to come through It also tells us in the

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Old Testament that they were giving For the good of the temple They weren't just giving because God told them to give they were giving for the good of the temple

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It says in Numbers 18 21 through 24 to the sons of Levi behold, I have given all the tithe in Israel for an inheritance in Return for their service which they perform

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The service of the tents of meeting the sons of Israel shall not come near the tent of meeting again, or they will bear

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The sin and I only the Levites shall perform the service of the tent of meeting and they shall bear their iniquity and It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations and among the sons of Israel that they

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They shall have no inheritance for the tithe of the sons of Israel Which they offers an offering to the Lord I have given to the

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Levites in for an inheritance Therefore I've said concerning them. They shall have no inheritance among the sons of Israel What I love about this is it ties everything that we've learned together now all the seeds all the produce all the land all the wine

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All the oil everything is to be given to the temple so that the mission of God the missio day can go forward

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The Levites think about the vulnerability that they felt. I'm not gonna give you an inheritance with the rest of the sons of Israel You have to rely on the generosity of your brothers the ministry

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The oil that went into the the the little incense altars the bread that was on the table everything the sacrifices was provided by the people so that the ministry of God could go forward and as far as I can tell there is no verse in the

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New Testament that That goes against that because it's the same case today. We don't give our fruit anymore

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It'd be a little strange and we wouldn't have anywhere to put it. We would have heaps as well But and when we give to the ministry of the church we are giving to people who are working to love and care for you and serve you and pray for you and and Minister to you and all of us together are giving our best to God so that we can see his kingdom built

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That's what it's here in the Old Testament. It's here in the New Testament. We're giving to see the kingdom of God expand

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Because look around you We live in a world that is failing and broken and the ministry is too important to leave it ill -equipped and underfunded

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We're gonna hand this generation off to our children. What's it gonna look like? Are we gonna see the kingdom of God advancing?

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Are we gonna see it failing? I think a lot of that has to do with how we view Something so simple as giving we see in the

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Bible that there's a blessing from God when we give and the blessing of God is That the ministry of God goes forward the tithe existed in the

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Old Covenant to build up the church And it's the same in the New Covenant as well It says in Exodus 25 2 through 8 tell the sons of Israel to raise a contribution for me

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From every man whose heart moves him and shall raise my contribution This is the contribution which you shall

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Which you are to raise from them gold and silver and bronze blue and purple scarlet material fine linen goat hair

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Very fancy back in those days ram skin dyed red porpoise skin a casea wood oil for lighting spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense onyx stones and The settings for the ephod and the breastplate let them construct a sanctuary for me that I may dwell among them

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Do you see how it's connected with worship? Do all this give all this and I will dwell among them and if you want to read something that's riveting

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I mean like Lord of the Rings riveting Read Exodus 25 through 28 on the details of the temple and you're like that's boring.

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No, it's not God gives detail after detail about how he desires to be worshipped and What a privilege it was for the people of God to be able to give towards that It wasn't just expenses.

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It was to encourage their senses as they walked into the presence of God Do you see which detail

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God gives that their nose would smell the incense that their mouth would taste the bread that they would touch The the gold in the in the tabernacle and they would see every sense every faculty

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They're being would be experienced the presence of God. God did not build a mediocre Tabernacle or temple he built something that all of them would be engaged with and so that the community could give towards so they could see

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Them and their gospel of the Old Testament be a light to the Gentiles and the same is true for us today we give and God is gracious We give to ministry so that the kingdom can be built it wasn't just oil and incense and gold and jewels, but it was also

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Currency the first time that I can see in the Bible that actually deals with shiny metal currency is

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Exodus 30 verse 11 through 16 and this was the temple tax If you remember

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Jesus tells them to put a hook in the water They pull out the fish and they have a shekel in the fish's mouth and he says give this for me and Peter That's what he's doing.

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He's doing the temple tax Every man in Israel had to pay the temple tax It says this the

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Lord spoke to Moses saying when you take a census of the sons of Israel to number them Then each one of them shall give a ransom.

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I love that For himself the Lord when you number them so that there will be no plague among them when you number them

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This is what everyone who is numbered shall give half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary a shekel is 28 garras just as you as you suspected a

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Shekel is a contribution to the Lord everyone who is numbered from 20 years old and over Shall give to the contribution of the

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Lord the rich shall not pay more The poor shall not pay less than the half shekel when you give the contribution to the

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Lord to make atonement for yourselves You shall take the atonement money from the sons of Israel and you shall give it to the service of the tent of meeting

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That it may be a memorial for the sons of Israel before the Lord to make atonement for yourself. So let's summarize real quick All of those oils and skins and all of that was to stock the temple for ministry

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The temple tax was to maintain the temple for ministry because when the plumbing didn't work

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They needed money to be able to cover it when the building was in disrepute They had to have money to be able to fix it

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This temple tax was to maintain the temple and the tithe was to furnish the temple all of their giving in some way or another

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Was to see the kingdom of God advance through the temple It's the same thing in the

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New Testament through the church and it's not just finances and it's not just assets

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It also covers our time As soon as this passage is over look at another aspect of what the tithe is

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The Lord spoke to Moses saying but as for you speak to the sons of Israel saying you shall surely observe my

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Sabbaths For this is a sign between me and you and throughout your generations.

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So nothing belongs to us not even your time After you've given 10 % of your ox and 10 % of your wheat and 10 % of your fields and 10 % of your oil and your porpoise skins

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If you have any of those after you've given those Give me one out of seven days Because it belongs to me as well

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Nothing is ours Including our time and what

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I find so beautiful about this is that God gives us six days And he only has us give him one

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Do you know why heaven is so glorious? Because every day is his in heaven And that a beautiful thing

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God gives us so much and asked for so little and that's a blessing that we get to give to him

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The attitude is why the New Testament can say God loves a cheerful giver

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Because when we realize all that we've been given in Christ All that we've been given

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It'll change us. It'll change our hearts. I Want to end by just reminding us of the gospel 2 ,000 years ago

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Christ came and He left the halls of heaven. He left the riches and the splendor of eternity with God He came and he lived in poverty for you

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And he walked among us And he taught them the kingdom of God and he taught them the gospel and what did they do to him?

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They crucified him But it said for the joy sat before him. He endured the cross scorning its shame for you

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And as Jesus marched up that hill John 3 16 came alive in a way that no one could ever imagine for God so loved the world that he gave

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And he gave his only Son The foundation now for new covenant giving is something we'll get into next week is that God owns everything

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God has given everything to us in Christ And now as people who walk like him and talk like him and learning to act like him

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We give back to God knowing that God can do immeasurably more with our stuff than we can

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This is one of the reasons this is My sardonic sense of humor forgive me

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This is one of the reasons I think capitalism is better Imagine I give my money to the government and they squander it

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I could do better with my money than they can the same is true with God in Comparison to us and God when we give our money to him.

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He always uses it when we give our time to him He always uses it When we hold on to it, we squander it

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The attitude and the heart for giving is the love of God if we're giving under any other compulsion

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I pray that the Lord would convince us of his gospel Show us how deep and wide he loves us so that we wouldn't do this anymore

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But we would live like this. Amen Let's pray Lord Jesus, we thank you so much that you have given us so much

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Undeserving as we are you gave us Christ You gave us freedom you gave us life

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You gave us Breath in our lungs you gave us families to love you gave us the gifts of a food and wine you gave us the gifts of so many different things

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Lord and And you've asked so little and the reason you've asked for so little is not to punish us but to bless us

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You've asked for the portion that you've asked for to sever our hearts from our stuff so that you would be our chief affection

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Lord I pray That no one in this room would walk away today with hands closed around their stuff

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But God I pray that all of us would have hands open and saying Lord fill my hands and take from my hands as you please

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You're my Lord You're my Savior and my King do with what I have with every way you want